The season's first LPGA major tournament gets underway Thursday with the Kraft Nabisco Championship in Rancho Mirage.

Who do you think is going to win it this year? A veteran like Karrie Webb or a young gun like Lexi Thompson?

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Top-ranked Inbee Park returns to defend her victory in the four-round event at Mission Hills Country Club, one of three major tournaments that the 25-year-old South Korean won in 2013.

But two other golfers — Hall of Famer Karrie Webb and Anna Nordqvist — arrive in the desert with momentum to challenge Park and the rest of the 111-player field, which includes 10 amateurs.

Webb won the JTBC Founders Cup event two weeks ago in Phoenix and the 39-year-old Australian is a two-time winner of the Kraft Nabisco Championship, in 2000 and 2006.

"Starting the year off as well as I have, it gives me that little bit of confidence going into this week that if I get things going, hopefully down the stretch on Sunday I'll have a shot to win it again," Webb told reporters Tuesday.

Nordqvist, a 26-year-old Swede, won the Kia Classic last weekend in Carlsbad for her second victory in her last four LPGA Tour starts and has climbed to No. 10 in the world rankings.

Suzann Pettersen, the No. 2-ranked player behind Park, also was expected to contend for her first Kraft Nabisco victory and its $300,000 winners' prize. But Pettersen, citing back pain from an "aggravated disk," withdrew from the event Tuesday, the second consecutive week she was forced to sit out a tournament because of back problems.

Wow on the 4th hole she was stuck behind a tree to the left side of the fairway. She hit a long iron from the rough low under the branches that were about 20 yards ahead of her. Looks like she kept it at about 5 feet high and curved it around to the left, missing the tree trunk by 5-10 feet. Ball rolled through the first cut, 30 yards of fairway, lots of green, leaving her a 15-20footer for birdie. Impressive.

Update: Birdie! Wow made something outta nothing there

Update 2: she has birdied 6 of her last 8 holes. She started on the back.